Indianapolis 500 notebook: Hilliard team pleased with showing

Monday

May 30, 2011 at 12:01 AMMay 30, 2011 at 10:02 AM

INDIANAPOLIS - Maybe Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing's IndyCar effort this year was a one-race venture again in the Indianapolis 500, but chief operating officer Scott Roembke thinks the team left its mark once more.

INDIANAPOLIS - Maybe Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing's IndyCar effort this year was a one-race venture again in the Indianapolis 500, but chief operating officer Scott Roembke thinks the team left its mark once more.

It saw one of its two drivers, Bertrand Baguette of Belgium, rise to the lead with 11 laps to go yesterday. Running low on fuel, the team rolled the dice - if there had been a caution in the next few laps, Baguette likely would have been the winner. Instead, he had to relinquish the lead for a pit stop on lap 198 and wound up seventh.

"Today's effort shows that our team is still competitive with the best teams in IndyCar," Roembke said. "To come in here with two strong cars and have a chance to win at the end gives us great reason to be optimistic for the future."

Jay Howard, the Hilliard-based team's other driver, was running strong until lap 61, when he exited the pits after a stop and his right rear wheel came off, causing him to crash.

The Baguette crew made no such gaffes.

"We had a great strategy, and we really had a quick car today," Baguette said. "It was crazy, to be leading the 100th anniversary of the Indy 500. It was unbelievable. We knew that we couldn't save enough fuel to get to the end, so I just had to go for it and hope for a yellow, but it didn't come."

Don't blame two-wide

The two-wide restarts used for the first time were predicted to produce carnage, and when E.J. Viso crashed in turn one after touching wheels with James Hinchcliffe on the first restart on lap 28, the dire forecasts seemed vindicated.

"It had nothing to do with that, because we were already in a single line by then," said Vison, who added that the problem seemed to be Hinchcliffe missing a shift as they accelerated. "I like (the two-wide) because it gives more opportunity for people to overtake. I think the fans like it, too."

That was the consensus of the drivers, with one glaring exception:

"I'm going to be very frank about that and say they're trying to kill somebody," said Marco Andretti, who finished ninth. "I'm glad it's great for the fans, but the risk where we're at is just ridiculous. It's a lottery."

Tag, you're out

First-time pole winner Alex Tagliani might have been snookered at the start by Scott Dixon, but Tagliani rebounded to lead 20 laps before his Sam Schmidt Motorsports team missed on some car changes two-thirds of the way through. He drifted back in the pack before crashing on lap 148 in an incident very similar to JR Hildebrand's final-lap mishap.

The most serious crash came on lap 158, when Townsend Bell cut down in turn one, collected Ryan Briscoe and the two careened together into the SAFER barrier. It took awhile to get the cars apart, but both drivers were OK.

There were seven crashes in all, involving nine cars, but there were no injuries.